‘I think it comes to us all at a certain point… You get your priorities in place. I think he’s really enjoying being a dad.’
– Ridley Scott
Russell’s parents have been married for over 40 years, but apart from one girl, long-term relationships always eluded the actor. It seems they have always been hard to maintain with Russell. Certainly, if one famous story was to be believed, it would seem that the ladies in his life were in a ménage à trois – them, him and his ego.
His old friend Mark Rimington said, ‘He was going out with a gorgeous ballerina during the show, but when she turned up he’d ignore her. He treated women like they were there for adornment rather than to be paid attention to.’
That certainly seems to ring true, with stories that one of Russell’s girlfriends was only noted for driving him to his gigs in her Volkswagen, while another girl who had a one-night stand with him was somewhat shocked to find a signed copy of Russell’s album under her pillow and him gone. Famously, when Russell was having sex with a young actress on location for Proof he could be heard hollering ‘Go Russ, go!’ in his trailer.
His Romper Stomper director, Geoffrey Wright, added, ‘Russell seeks the company of women who are accomplished and secure, which usually means they’re more mature. What separates him from other Hollywood guys is that he’s not chasing teenage girls who are easy to outwit and manipulate. That’s not to say he doesn’t enjoy a good flirt or a one-night stand, but generally he seeks equals.’
He found that in Danielle Spencer.
At first just friends, they began dating after their 1990 movie The Crossing had finished and her relationship with her boyfriend had ended. ‘We were both quite busy and scattered a bit, but we wrote a few letters and would phone each other and when we were in Sydney we would meet up. Our romance was a very gradual thing and it only really became possible when I split up from my boyfriend. Suddenly I was available and suddenly Russell could look at me in a different way. I knew him so well before it got romantic that the things I liked about him were things other than his good looks or sex appeal. I’d gone beyond that stage.
‘He had to go to Melbourne for a film soon after we got together but he would send me little gifts all the time. I remember we once walked past a shop selling miniature dolls’ house furniture and I said something about how I loved all that sort of thing. Well, he obviously remembered because when he went to Melbourne he kept sending me little bits and pieces – a miniature grand piano would arrive one day, then something else.
‘He’d send funny toys and quirky things like those sponges you put in the bath and they blow up into animals when they’re wet. He’d send things that would make you laugh, but he was just as capable of sending a beautiful bunch of red roses. He really is a very romantic and thoughtful person. He really knows how to make a girl feel special.’
Danielle would regularly stay at Russell’s apartment, even sometimes when he was away filming. ‘He would cook for me – his speciality was a barbecue – and he’d surprise me by buying a whole lot of seafood and bringing it home to cook. I don’t think many men are good at doing housework, but from what I remember he did his share. He was a bit messy but I think we both were!’
Danielle would visit him on film sets: Russell was desperate for her to come see him on The Quick and the Dead. He was lonely, but he was also keen for Danielle to sample the environment.
‘People forget it can get lonely living on set on your own for several months, even though it might look fun and glamorous,’ she said. ‘I think it was really grounding and very comforting for Russell to have someone special there with him, someone to say, “Hi, how are you?” after a busy day shooting.
‘I sometimes regret that. I possibly should have taken the opportunity to explore some career options over there and done some auditions.
‘I always felt that he deserved it. I have never ever seen anyone work as hard as Russell in my life. He is the most driven, hard-working person I have come across. I never doubted for a minute he would get there and I never ever resented it because I felt he deserved it and that he was a great actor. In fact, I couldn’t see how he wouldn’t get there. I’m very proud of him – I think he has done an amazing job.’
The couple split up in 1995 after nearly five years together. It was around the time that Russell was starting to make inroads with his acting career in America. It seemed that his career had the potential to take off and he had his perfect woman, but Danielle wasn’t ready to live in Los Angeles.
‘It was about life direction,’ she said. ‘Things were starting to happen for him and I didn’t want to be in L.A.’
A friend told New Idea magazine, ‘Russell had been going out with Danielle for nearly five years. He adored and respected her. He came to me one day in turmoil. He wanted to marry Danielle yet he was desperate to break into Hollywood.’
Danielle would only say, ‘I was too young for marriage. I wasn’t in marriage or baby mode.’
Talking about working away from home constantly putting a strain on relationships, she said, ‘It’s a problem for anyone in the entertainment industry, myself included. Russell always wanted to have a relationship like his parents but he knew it would be hard to attain. His parents have had a very solid, ongoing companionship for years, but when you’re separated all the time and you’re thrown into weird situations it can be quite destructive to your relationship.’
‘We tried to keep the relationship going, but never at any time did we have a break-up,’ Russell said. ‘It was profoundly sad, but at the same time I wasn’t going to say to her, “You must wait for me.” Yet there probably weren’t more than a few weeks in the 14 years from the time I met her, when we didn’t communicate. There’s a certain magical thing about me and her together.’
He added, ‘I invited her to be my date for the Academy Awards, and when they announced that I had won I turned to her, and I leant down and said, “This is because you’re here.” And I gave her a kiss. It was just after that that we started seeing each other again as boyfriend and girlfriend.’
In another interview he said, ‘It was more like a deep mutual respect, a mutual understanding. I have many, many things I’d like to say about Danielle. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, I’ve known Dani for a long time.’
Danielle had seen Russell through it all – years of fruitless attempts to break into Hollywood, his highly publicised relationship with Meg Ryan and the Oscar wins. When they got back together it was clear to his family and friends that this time it was for good.
For Russell, it has always been Danielle. When he met her for the first time in 1989 for The Crossing, he was immediately smitten. ‘I just really liked her. She had a stillness and a grace, which wasn’t very usual in women her age – she was only 18 or 19 at the time. I just wanted to find out what was really going on behind those eyes.’
After their first meeting he would write the song ‘Inside Her Eyes’ – which would end up as his band’s 2003 record.
His grand plans of courtship didn’t always go to plan, however. One attempt saw him hiring a boat for her – unfortunately the only one he could get with a kitchen was one that seated 150 people.
‘So this thing arrived and I thought, “Oh my God.” It was just massive. I had all this fresh scampi and I was in the kitchen but it was almost a three-minute walk to get from the galley to where she was sitting on the deck. It could be a comedy in itself. She thought it was way over the top.’
Marriage is important to Russell. ‘With the two of us at our ages, we both owed our parents a public marriage. My mum has been hoping for it since I was 16.
‘I have my parents’ marriage as a template. They’ve been married 45 years now and that’s probably why I waited as long as I did – because I absolutely wanted to make sure that I only did it once.’
Both Russell and Danielle share a fondness for plain talking and don’t suffer fools gladly. Recalling an incident when his wife was pregnant, Russell said, ‘My wife is very straightforward. The other day she was being hassled by people saying she should go to classes. She said, “I know how to fucking breathe.” Now you know why I married the girl.’
Danielle’s big dream was a Roman wedding ceremony but Russell wasn’t sure of the logistics involved flying to Italy. So he built a Byzantine chapel on his Australian estate instead. ‘I needed to convince Danielle she didn’t have to travel to Rome to get married like she’d always dreamed of, because I saw all the paperwork involved. I built her a Byzantine chapel of her own. It is consecrated and everything. In the long term, it really isn’t extravagant at all, because we don’t have to travel to Rome to see where we got married.’
Russell abstained from sex for three months before he married. ‘We saw each other and stuff like that, but we didn’t spend the nights together – just so the wedding night and the honeymoon and all that felt sort of new.’
They finally got married on 7 April, 2003, with Russell wearing a suit designed by his friend Giorgio Armani.
When Danielle announced that she was pregnant, Russell was delighted. He had carved a proper life for himself. He had a wife, a kid on the way and his parents and his brother all lived within an acre on his New South Wales farm.
‘I didn’t live in a house until I was 14,’ he said. ‘My dad changed employment once every 12 months, and that usually meant a change of apartments or hotels. Now I look at people who grew up in one house, one bedroom, and I’m jealous. Do I still yearn for that? Yeah, and what I’ve done with the farm is constructed around that. The place is big enough so that Mum and Dad and Terry – and me, when I’m there – can all live in it without being in each other’s pockets. And I can pamper myself there, I can rest up, or I can do physical work. Or I can wander off into the bush and have absolute serenity.’
His farm holds a special significance for Russell. Backpacks are dotted around the buildings, filled with powdered milk, coffee, sugar and a metal cup so he can pick one up whenever he likes and go out and hike all day.
He said in 1997, ‘If I ever feel I’m in danger of losing my perspective about the business of acting, I can always go home to the farm. My parents and older brother live there and they run the place when I’m away. I’ve set everything up at the farm so things should flow just fine when I’m away, and I try to be there when all the babies are being born – we have horses, cows, dogs and chickens.
‘I’m just a big softie when it comes to the farm. These animals are my friends, and I enjoy spending time with them because they open my mind up again when the small world of show business threatens to close it down.’ Talking about when his son Charlie was born, he admitted he had concerns. ‘Yeah, I’m going to be there, absolutely. But I’m only allowed to look in certain areas. She wants me to focus on her and that’s fine and dandy.
‘Some people have got advice, some people have got horror stories. I like the people that just look you in the eye with that kind of glow and say, “It’s all gonna be cool.”’
His co-star Paul Bettany told him, ‘I’ve told Russell to get as much sleep as possible stored up before it’s born and to insist on sleeping time scheduled into all his shoots in the first 18 months.
‘I’m also coaching him in the art of speed-eating. If you eat quickly, you can get a sneaky power nap in during the lunch break.’
Russell had picked up some parenthood tips during the filming of on Master and Commander, after stepping in to take care of 14-year-old Jack Randall when his mother had had to go back to England because of a family emergency. ‘They were about to hire a professional chaperone and it came to my attention and I didn’t want that energy on set. All the cast had family members and there were no outsiders, and I just thought the bringing in a professional chaperone might adjust the rhythm.
‘So we got the paperwork done and he became my ward, and he stayed in the same apartment building that I stayed in and I took him to work every day and we had dinner together every night.’
He added, ‘He’s a very intelligent young boy but had never read a book, which I found to be just unbelievable. I was like, “I’m very sorry, mate – you’re reading now. Here’s your book and you’ve got three days to read it!”
‘Jack was very much into reptiles, so I introduced him to [crocodile hunter] Steve Irwin. Irwin offered Jack a summer apprenticeship at the Australia Zoo.’
Charles Spencer Crowe was born on 21 December, 2003 at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Australia, weighing six pounds and two ounces. Russell was there to capture it all on film.
‘I’ve got all the footage, and Dani actually said to me the next day, “You were fucking outrageous.” Whenever I sense that she’s getting a little uncomfortable, my focus is on her, but I make sure I put the camera somewhere where it still gets a good two-shot. And I don’t stop or anything – one minute I’m shooting her, and you can see a little flicker of eyelid, of pain, or whatever. I’m seeing her, seeing the pain the angle going to her, checking she’s OK and then I’m back into it.
‘I’ve got cutaways. Anything interesting that’s in the corridor, I’ve got a cutaway, too. I’ve got the feet of the nurse. She was wearing purple shoes. I’ve got lefts and rights, covered over shoulders both ways, just in case, because I didn’t know how I’d want to do it.
‘But, see, it was probably easier for me to deal with this huge thing that was happening by having this little thing to do, which was keep the video camera going.’
Talking about their decision to name their first child Charlie, Russell said, ‘It was one of those odd things. When Dani wanted to call the baby Charlie, I said, “I don’t think that’ll go down very well in my family.” We’ve had two Charles Crowes. One died scuba diving at 17. The other, the uncle of my grandfather, died in the Battle of Britain at 21. But Dani had had an Uncle Charlie who moved from York to Hollywood and lived till he was 96. So I went on two things: a combination of genes and third-time lucky.’
Talking about Russell’s parenting skills, his father-in-law, Don Spencer said, ‘I think he’ll be a fantastic dad. He’s over the moon. We kept saying, “Has anyone else got a chance of holding this baby, Russell?” He said, “I’m bonding, I’m bonding!”’
Russell and Danielle welcomed their second child in the early hours of 7 July, 2006. He weighed eight pounds, and they named him Tennyson Spencer Crowe.
‘We’ll call him Tenny for short. My brother’s name is Terry so that makes his initials TC as well, so slightly after him. But mainly because it’s just different,’ Russell said, shortly after the birth. ‘Everybody is fine. The family is over there giving her big kisses and stuff. I am just going home to pick up Charlie to take him over to meet his new baby. We have been building him up pretty well for it. We have actually called it his baby.’
Russell has also talked about having more, kids, saying, ‘I kind of get to this point where I’m spending most of my time telling stories about my kids … It is the most special and wonderful thing. I’m continuously asking my wife about the possibility of expanding the brood.’
‘I’d have a tribe if it was up to me. I just love being a dad. I love the privilege of having these extremely wonderful personalities in my life.’
The children are to receive a moving gift in 2032, where they can open a time capsule that Russell has buried. In it is a letter from him that says, ‘Our lives have been blessed by you. Whatever comes along I will always love you with my whole being and soul. I know I would have brought you up to love your mother above all. My hope is that you find the things, people and love that bring you love and joy. Every day my life is better because I am a father.’
His loving family is now Russell’s priority, and he admits that he finds it harder to justify his working schedule. ‘The thing is with the jobs I am choosing these days is that they don’t come with 26- or 38-week shooting schedules like some of the films I’ve done in the last few years.
‘Every decision that I make now depends on what’s right for my wife Danielle and my two young boys. Now that I’m getting a little bit older the bones are creaking and the Achilles tendons don’t work the way they should. I don’t approach everything with the same intensity that I used to.’
Russell was filming in New York when his wife phoned him. ‘She was saying she heard all this noise in the corridor, so she went to check out what it was, and there’s my son dragging a laden suitcase down the corridor.
‘She said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m going to America to see Daddy.” So they turned it into a game. Every day, he packs his bag now.
‘How I keep them grounded is a good question and it’s something I’m going to be dealing with for the rest of my life. That’s the big gig, being a dad.’